


Thoughts Adrift

by carloabay



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Gen, Outer Space, Paper football, Protect Tony Stark at all costs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:48:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23545645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carloabay/pseuds/carloabay
Summary: Nebula and Tony, adrift in space.
Relationships: Nebula & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	Thoughts Adrift

**Author's Note:**

> It is way harder than I thought to figure out how to write Nebula lol.  
> I hope I did her right!

Tony stares at the empty space between his arms, his thoughts terrifyingly blank. He did it. He did it. He did it. 

Those are the only words his mind produces. Over and over. Somewhere between his cerebrum and his tongue, nerves spark and connect, and his single thought spills from his mouth. A single shudder wracks through his spine and he tries to breathe. He can’t. He’s forgotten how.

He did it. I did it. 

I let him get away. 

There’s something dusting his fingers, ashy and grey. 

He waits for his turn. 

He waits to dissolve and die, to go after Peter. He hopes and waits and stares, but his fingers are solid. 

Something cracks, like a door slammed too hard, shedding plaster from a badly made wall. Tony chokes on the dusty orange air, chokes out sounds that make no sense, curls his fingers into fists, thumps his head into his knee. The hole in his stomach is nothing compared to the widening chasm that Peter has left. Has left. Because Peter is gone, dead. 

Dusted. 

Dissolved, right in Tony’s arms. Begging for his life, crying and panicking. I did this. I couldn’t stop him. Unwillingly, Tony’s brain rewinds, and behind his screwed-closed eyes, he watches it all again. Strange. Quill. The two idiots whose names he never learned. And Peter’s warm weight vanishing like a blown dandelion clock. 

Tony presses his mouth into his trousers and screams in muffled grief.

∆

Nebula watches from a distance as the Terran curls in on himself, emitting those broken noises. She could leave. Take the Benatar, hunt down Thanos and end his miserable existence. Fulfil that sacred dream that she has never let go of. Already, a plan is forming. But he will know. He has the stones. He can outfight her, outrun her, crush her on a single whim. 

She can’t plan for this. One way or another, it is over. Rage may burn her, envelop her, tear her up from the inside out, but Thanos has won. 

_Make a choice, daughter,_ his deep, mocking tone echoes in her head. He has made his choices. He made them centuries ago. What will she do now? 

All of this, she had thought, was for her. Her revenge. Her sister. Her life. But it never could be. He would always win. Now that it’s gone, and there is nothing left, what will she do?

The Terran has stopped screaming. He is still curled up, like a child, but children don’t stare hauntingly at nothing, mouths hanging open, empty shells, bleeding out. Maybe they do. She doesn’t know anything about children. Was it a child, the one who dissolved in the Terran’s grasp? Was it his child? 

He is grieving for it. She recognises those sounds. Not that she’s ever made them. She grieved for Gamora without sound. She grieved with revenge and rage and a sharp, sharp blade angled at Thanos’s throat. In the end, the grief never passed. The blade never found skin. The revenge and rage pool, ice cold, in the bottom of her abdomen. 

What will she do?

She makes her choices in a few split seconds, without careful, precise planning, without knife-sharp prediction and calculation. Unprecedented. Impulses. 

She walks towards the Terran, images in mind. The grieving Terran, the Benatar, open space. She needs to get off this planet, or they will die. She can’t leave him behind. She needs him, the maker of the suit that survived a hit from Thanos, a moon and an infinity stone, she tells herself. She tells herself, it's a matter of survival. 

Pure life or death. 

He is a thing she needs. A part. Piece of machinery. But she knows, somewhere inside that won't admit it, she also needs someone to live. Someone to save. She makes her choices.

He doesn’t look up when she approaches, doesn’t even seem to hear her. Nebula lays a hand on his shoulder, and when he doesn’t move, she hooks her other arm under his far shoulder, and pulls him to his feet. 

He can’t get them under him, so she half-drags him across the broken surface, all the way to the Benatar. It can’t be comfortable, but he doesn’t make a sound. His eyes are dim, unfocused. Not the way Terran eyes work, she notes; he needs...she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know. What does he need? Food, water. He needs his child back. 

They stumble into the Benatar together and she lays him down on the floor and looks around. She knows how to fly it, but it won’t be that easy, it’s never that easy. The Benatar is probably broken somewhere, courtesy of the moon Thanos had thrown at the Terran during the fight. 

Besides, the planet’s gravity made chunks of rock fly in strange directions when Quill had brought them in to land, and they’d definitely been hit more than a few times.

Nebula closes the entry ramp, leaving the Terran where he is, and goes to search for the medical supplies. She makes the strange saving impulse more bearable with a strict list of what they need, and what they need to do. In order. It goes a little like this in her head:

Blankets. Keep the fever away  
Water  
Medical supplies: bandages, blowtorch, antiseptic, antibiotic  
Food: non-solid (She bypasses the fruit bowl. The Terran won’t stomach that on an infected wound)  
Fix the Benatar (this one she stumbles on. She’s not a spaceship engineer)

She circles back to the Terran, still lying where she left him, staring at the ceiling, and dumps her armful of supplies on the ground next to him. He barely reacts. Barely. But it’s a start.

“We need to fix you,” she says, peering into his still-dull eyes. She pulls a blanket from the pile and shoves her arms under his back, lifts him up to prop him against the wall of the ship and tucks the blanket around his shoulders. 

“I did it,” he slurs. Delirium. Nebula frowns. This is going to be harder than she’d anticipated. She hands him a flask full of water. He doesn’t take it.

“Take the water,” she demands. His eyes drift to her face. They still don’t focus. He reaches for the water and drinks it. A small triumph. “I am going to fix you,” she tells him. “If we have enough fuel, I will also take you home. You will need to help me.” He swallows and blinks a few times. Terrans are slow to heal, she knows. But she hoped it would be quicker than this. Then he nods. “There is a table downstairs. We will fix you there.” She speaks as slowly as she can bear to. 

He nods again and she wastes no time in heaving him back up from the floor and making their way to the steps. He is shorter than her by a long way, so it’s easy to carry him. 

Then she slips on the steps, feet wheeling out from under her and they tumble down together in a flurry of limbs. She gets herself under him just in time and the floor whacks the metal plating on the back of her head instead of splattering his fragile brains everywhere. He grunts in pain. First sound. Another small triumph. 

Nebula rolls him onto the table unceremoniously, and as she does so, he bares his teeth. She takes a step back. Anger? No, pain. It will take her a while to get accustomed to his expressions. Quill may have been Terran, but he spent years assimilating the ways other Ravager species communicated with their faces. 

The Terran clutches the blanket with a fist and heaves out a long breath. Again, she is reminded of a child. She makes the trip back up the stairs to collect the pile of supplies, and climbs the stairs back down, this time more carefully. 

When she looks over at the Terran, he's half sitting up, winding the blanket around his middle, tight. He doesn't notice her until she dumps the supplies on the floor next to him, and then, he looks up, startled. She looks at the blanket. He looks at the blanket.

"I didn't know how long you were gonna be," he explains, stiffly. It must be causing him incredible pain to speak, but she doesn't tell him to stop. Staying conscious will keep him alive. She nods, once and he stares at her curiously. 

She steps away from his stare and bends down to root through the pile for the anti-bacterial liquid. It's surface cleaner. She gestures for him to move aside, sprays it on the table, and uses the other blanket to spread it around. Quick, methodical circles. Like she's rubbing out the uncertainty in her own mind, the holes in her impulse plan. He watches her, a hand over the blanket around his stomach.

∆

The blue girl's a strange one. Blank-faced, terrifying, weirdly strong for someone so skinny. Hella tall. Barely speaks. Tony tries to focus on all of that, on the blue alien shoving a water flask into his hands, on the creaking of the ship around them, on the hot pain under his ribs. 

Tries not to focus on the before. The fight. 

The end. 

He desperately thinks, thinks stay alive, thinks Pepper, thinks _please_. Please let her be alive. Please let me get to her to find out. Please don't let me die in space. He doesn't know who he's begging to. Anyone who'll listen. He'd pray to Thor's dad if he needed to.

The blue girl finishes wiping the table and he rolls into his back, hand on the blanket around his middle. Even just the rolling makes the edges of his vision go a little white, and he grits his teeth. Stay awake stay awake stay awake stay alive. 

The blue girl unties the knot in the bloodied blanket and tosses it aside, yanks up Tony's shirt. The air touches his wound and it stings and he grits his teeth harder. She picks up a bottle of clear something, drips some onto a cloth, presses it into the wound and hot pain flares again. He'll break his teeth if he grinds anymore. Then she picks up a blowtorch and panic wraps rubber arms around his brain, freezes his muscles.

"Wait," he blurts, internally yelling at himself. He's not weak. He's had worse. He breathes. In. Out-

"Breathe evenly," she says, matter of fact, a deep, grinding voice, and she switches on the blowtorch. He grips the edges of the table and she lowers the torch and _fuck_. It hurts like hell, but he breathes and stays rigidly still and shit and fuck and the pain is worse even than the getting stabbed and he swears, soft, and the torch moves round and round, then off and it's done. The pain flares only dully now and Tony gasps for breath, his jaw and hands and arms shaking with that rubber panic.

"Ouch. You are very practical, aren't you?" He says, the words stumbling dazedly through his mouth. 

"I've had to be," she replies. Her words are very methodical. Mechanic. She's not messing around. He kinda likes her.

"What's your name?"

"Nebula."

"I'm Tony." She stares at him like she doesn't know what to say. Her eyes are completely black. He manages a smile through another blaze of pain from his stomach. She doesn't smile back.

She hands him an end of a bandage, one with a soft square of dressing material in the middle, and he presses it against his skin. She winds the other end around him, the square against the stab wound, around and around and around, then pins it tight. All without speaking. 

Tony reaches for his shirt hem and tugs it back down, then looks down at the pile of stuff on the floor.

"What's next, Nebula?" He asks. She presses the flask of water into his hands again and looks around.

"The ship needs to be fixed. I don't know how far we can go, but-"

"It's worth a try," he finishes, swinging his legs off the table with a grunt. Nebula crosses her arms.

"Exactly."

"Good thing you got a mechanic on board, huh?" He jokes. She's still scanning the insides of the ship. The silence gives him space to think, and he directs his thoughts violently at the spaceship he's in. A goddamn spaceship. If he wasn't half dead on an abandoned alien planet, he'd be giddy with excitement. "So, I should figure out how this thing runs, if it's good to go, fix what isn't, and off we pop?" He suggests. "Whaddaya think?" She whips her head round, like she's startled that he's asking questions. He hesitates. "Bad idea? I don't know how spaceships work-"

"No," she says abruptly. He stops talking. "No, it is a good idea. I will help you." He blinks.

"Well-- great. Great. Let's get started."

As it turns out, a spaceship is very complicated. Too easy for it to be: check, fix, off we pop. But he's got a brain and another person, and he's done more with less. Well, maybe not more, but he's had less. 

First, he gets Nebula to look at supplies while he scopes out the cockpit. It'll be good to know how many days of oxygen they have left. And fuel. The control panel is, as he had anticipated, beyond awesome. But he's not here to play with it. If he ever gets home, he'll ask Nebula for a victory joyride. 

Right now, he's got to figure out what the hell all this does, what's broke, and how to fix it. 

It's pretty easy. Everything's labelled in English, probably courtesy of Quill (don't think don't think don't think), so parts like 'Engine On' and 'Rear Thrusters' stand out pretty easily. On the right side, there's a few gear-looking things that have scribbles underneath. Tony bends closer and grins. 'Rear Blasters'. 'Front Blasters'. 'Side Guns'. Awesome.

He sits down in the left hand seat, looking for any red hazard lights or anything obvious like that, but nothing jumps out at him at first. It's huge and complicated and completely alien to him, even with everything labelled, so he searches further, under the dash, behind the seats. Flips open caps over big buttons. Wiggles gears. Finally, he finds a switch labelled 'Busted Check', and flicks it. This time, a red light _does_ come on, right under 'Fuel Cells'. 

Tony chews on the inside of his cheek for a moment, then heaves himself painfully out of the cockpit chair and over to the stairs. He sits on the top step and slowly, slowly, bumshuffles down each step until he hits the bottom. Thump, thump. Nebula walks over and helps him stand.

"We have twenty two days of oxygen. About twenty six of food and water," she says. Tony nods. 

"Well, bad news. Cockpit said the fuel cells were damaged. They sound important." Nebula blinks, slowly.

"They looked fine when I saw them."

"We should probably check again," Tony offers. "Not that I don't have absolute faith in your space knowledge, but it doesn't sound like we can get off the ground without 'em." Nebula nods, then looks down, about to say something.

"I don't know how far we can get. We are thousands of light years from Terra. I am not sure if this ship can still go into hyperspeed. We took a lot of hits when we were flying in." Tony nods, mirroring her, hardening his jaw. They have to try.

"We gotta try, at least. Better out there than sitting on this dead rock till we starve."

And they do. They do try. Nebula helps Tony around, gradually getting less and less frosty and ramrod, and together they take out the fuel cells and pore over them. They're busted, cracked. They figure out they should get up in space, get as far as they can while trying to fix them, so they use the one remaining fuel cell that works and fire up. 

Then they blast through space and Tony stares out of the front window at the bars of light zooming past them, shaking powdered space rations into his mouth. He tries not to eat too much. He's so hungry he might start digesting himself. He can see his ribs through his shirt. Nebula cuts holes in one of the blankets and Tony wears it like a poncho as he rides out the fever from the infection. It passes soon enough. 

The remaining fuel cell runs out and they stutter to a stop in the middle of space. 

Drift. 

Tony thanks the stars outside that the really essential bits of the ship aren't damaged. Thanks the stars that they even managed to get off Titan. They manage to reverse the ion charge on the broken fuel cells, which gives them another 48 hours of flight, but it doesn't get them much further and they don't have the parts to repair the cells. 

When they stop for the final time, Tony and Nebula are sitting downstairs, sharing a dry packet of powdered rations. The engine gives a rattle and gives up, juddering the entire vehicle. Tony almost falls over and Nebula rights him with a hand on his shoulder. They look at each other, and the ship squeezes out one last sorrowful sigh, the tightening of a noose. Tony tries not to think about Pepper. He tries not to think about death. 

But God, he can't help it. 

The Benatar drifts again, spinning ever so slowly amongst that beautiful, black-backed canvas.

Nebula shows Tony her cybernetic arm. Tony shows her his nanotech helmet, and she scoffs. Nebula tells Tony about Thanos. 

"My father," she says, spitting the words. Tony wants to cry. 

_I'm gonna be your new dad_ , he thinks, his head dizzy with malnutrition. 

Tony teaches Nebula how to play paper football. Tony praises her and laughs and tells jokes. He thinks of Peter and Pepper and Rhodey and Happy when he's trying to sleep. Instead of sleeping, he cries. He thinks of the others. He lists them in his head, all the people he never said goodbye to. Steve. Nat. Sam. Clint. Wanda. Bruce. Thor. Vision. He cries quieter.

He thinks, _Maybe it's not so bad. Maybe it's better this way._

∆

They play paper football. Nebula has never played paper football. She humours him. A song plays, one of Quill's ones. She remembers hearing it before. The memory doesn't tie to anything else except Gamora's face. Nebula thinks she is still grieving, but she doesn't know. She knows Tony is grieving, because he tells her when the Benatar stops for the last time.

"I'm leaving Pepper behind," he says. Pepper is a Terran spice, Nebula thinks. "We were engaged," Tony explains distantly. 

Malnutrition has made him dissociate sometimes. He won't eat more than a certain amount of food. Like he's trying to eke out survival, stretch his hope, his chance. Nebula does not tell him that this is impossible. "I'm leaving her behind. I hope she's okay. I'm leaving lotsa people behind." Nebula doesn't know what to say. She's not leaving anyone.

 _I'll see Gamora again,_ some part of her thinks. Some stupid part. There is nothing after death. Decay. That's it. They'll decay here in the Benatar. Out here in space.

They play paper football again. Nebula misses the ball and lunges for it with a frustrated rasp, and Tony jerks back.

"You don't need to do that," he says with a teasing point of his finger. "Because, uh...you're just holding a position." Nebula lines it up again and flicks it towards him, close to his fingers...almost. She wants to win. She always wants to win. "That was close," Tony says encouragingly. She tries again and...there. Tony smiles and nods. "That's a goal. We are now one apiece." Nebula feels a little thrill. A win.

"I would like to try again," she says carefully. Tony nods, and she lines it up. One, two, flick!

"We're tied up. Feel the tension?" She can't, but she knows he's joking. He's funny. He lines up the ball and she arranges her fingers like he showed her. Flick. It goes off to the side. "That was terrible. Now you have a chance to win," he says. 

_It was terrible_ Nebula agrees silently. She lines up the ball. One, two, flick! In! 

"And you've won!" Won? "Congratulations!" He reaches out his hand, and she extends hers to shake it. She can feel a smile curving her mouth. That's not something she's used to. She won. "Fair game. Good sport. Have fun?" The little smile widens, just a bit.

"It was fun," she says. Because it was.

∆

Tony slumps against one of the seats in the cockpit, jacket just over his shoulders. He ditched the poncho a couple days ago when the fever wore off. His fingers move over the surface of the helmet, under the jawline.

"This thing on?" He mutters, tapping it. Come on, Iron Man. It blinks lights and turns on, beeps, scans him. He sighs and settles back against the cockpit seat again. 

Last message. The last words of Tony Stark. Maybe no one will ever hear it. He takes a deep breath. He needs them nowadays. He practically lives on air. 

"Hey Miss Potts," he manages. Those words alone boost him, and he carries on. "Pep. If you find this recording, don't post it on social media. It's gonna be a real tear-jerker. I don't know if you're ever going to see these. I don't even know if you're... if you're still... Oh god, I hope so. Today is day 21, uh 22." He stares out of the window. 

A beautiful blue nebula blooms there, lightyears away. He remembers pointing it out to Nebula. Comparing it to her. She acted like she'd never had anyone call her beautiful before, and it broke Tony's heart. He thinks of Nebula as he speaks again. 

"You know, if it wasn't for the existential terror of staring into a void of space, I'd say I'm feeling better today. The infection's run its course, Thanks to the blue meanie back there." He twists his head to look back. There she is, walking around a little distance away. His saviour. He smiles. "You'd love her. Very practical. Only a tiny bit sadistic." He shifts positions. What to say now? "Some fuel cells were cracked during battle, but we figured out a way to reverse the ion charge to buy ourselves about 48 hours of time." He thinks of the desperate way he hammered on those cells, the image of Pepper's face driving him to work harder. He sighs. "But it's now dead in the water. We're 1000 light years from the nearest 7-11. Oxygen will run out tomorrow. And that'll be it." He swallows his last wave of grief. No need for it now. No use. It drove him before, but now it'll just use up his energy. "And Pep, I …" he chokes on her name. 

He tries to carry on. It's okay, Tony. She needs this. Come on. Somehow, he hears those thoughts in Happy's voice.

 _Goodbye, Happy. Rhodey. I'm sorry,_ he thinks. 

"I know I said no more surprises, but I was really hoping to pull off one last one." He sighs and his head droops. One last miracle. One last return. 

_I'm sorry._

"But it looks like... well you know what it looks like." He pushes his head back up, rests it on the seat. Tries to make it lighter. "Don't feel bad about this. I mean, if you grovel for a couple of weeks, and then move on with enormous guilt…" A spell of dizziness rolls over him, even though he's sitting down. The air will thin out soon. He'll be gone, soon. "I should probably lie down." He looks down at the helmet. Sees her listening to this. "Please know that... when I drift off, I will think about you." 

_"Tears of joy. I hate job hunting._

_"I always forget to wear deodorant and dance with my boss in front of everyone that I work with in a dress with no back."_

_"A lot of olives. Like at least three olives."_

_"You're ridiculous."_

_"I love you."_

"Because it's always been you," he finishes. And off. Beep. Power down. Tony Stark is no more. He touches the helmet one last time, rubs his thumb over the left eye, then shuffles onto his side. He's ready. He knows he is. He pulls his jacket over his shoulder and rests his head on the cold, hard floor.

 _Goodbye, Pep,_ he thinks. He can barely think. He's so tired. But he thinks it with his last thoughts, and he drifts, floats in space under a beautiful cluster of starry dust.

∆

Nebula finds Tony asleep on the floor. She'd heard him talking into the helmet, giving a message back home. She hopes they find the ship and the message. It's unlikely. But she hopes.

She didn't used to hope, she realises as she lifts Tony into the cockpit seat, his shuttered eyes facing out at the nebula in front. Now she hopes. She hopes because of him. She covers him with his jacket and smiles. He won't see it, but he'll know. They'll both be gone by the time they could have woken up. 

She thinks, _Maybe it's better this way._

∆

The ship is just drifting easily in the middle of an empty vacuum when she finds it. She flies right up to it to look inside. It had better be the right one, she thinks. A Terran sits in the cockpit seat, covered by a jacket. Thin. Dying. It's him. Tony Stark. However the hell he got from Titan to here without knowing how to fly a spaceship, she'll never know. Or maybe she will, if she gets her ass in gear and hauls it back to earth before Stark's oxygen runs out. 

Someone comes up behind Stark's seat, bends to see Carol, squinting. It's a Luphomoid. Mostly machinery, by the looks of her. Stark's eyes flicker open and he squints at her too, both of them barely able to see on account of the light surrounding her. She gives them a little smile.

 _Gotcha,_ she thinks. _Time to go home._

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it!
> 
> Edit: another one shot coming up, Nat & Clint.  
> Its super bad so far, so don't hold your breath lads. :)
> 
> I legit just got tired of OC stuff, but I will keep writing GG and TE  
> Wanted to try my hand at this


End file.
